Overlooked Wisconsin ready to 'break through that wall' in chase for national title

MADISON, Wis. – Wisconsin can win the national championship. This is meant in the very obvious sense: Wisconsin annually fields a football team; owns jerseys, pads and helmets; features a full roster of athletes, most on scholarship for their athletic ability, and plays its games in a football stadium, as part of the Big Ten Conference. The Badgers are one of 129 teams in the Bowl Subdivision eligible to win the national title.

Wisconsin’s Jonathan Taylor breaks away for a touchdown run during the first half against Florida Atlantic in 2017.

Even still, it’s a question often lobbed in the Badgers’ direction, one that seems to ignore the program’s 25-year run among the most consistently successful performers in the sport:

Can Wisconsin win a national championship?

“There’s a competitive part of this. The bar has been set here, appropriately, to win championships,” head coach Paul Chryst said. “We all know where we want to go. I think the program and our expectations have changed. Those who have come before have built and laid groundwork.

“Honestly, I spend no time … I would care if my players didn’t think it. But they do. There will be a group that does it. And those are the fun journeys, right?”

In recent years, at least, the honor has been reserved only for the established, long-standing elite. Alabama. Florida State. Ohio State. Auburn. Clemson’s recent championship turn was described in some parts as an underdog story – as if the Tigers were a sort of against-all-odds success story. Wisconsin doesn’t breathe that same air.

But the Badgers keep winning. About three decades ago, then-head coach and current athletics director Barry Alvarez began building a program that has reached a bowl game in every season since 1996 but one. The Badgers have taken another step since Alvarez’s retirement: Wisconsin has 122 wins in the past dozen seasons, ending all but two of those years in the Top 25.

Each of the past four teams, three under Chryst’s direction, have won at least 10 games. Last year’s team came within a touchdown of a Big Ten title and a place in the College Football Playoff. Yet there’s little talk nationally – let alone within the program’s own fan base – of the program someday taking the next step. Why? Is it because Wisconsin is, well, Wisconsin? That's a flimsy excuse.

“Even around the state, some of our biggest supporters will say it,” said linebacker T.J. Edwards, meaning a national title, “but you kind of see that they don’t really believe it. But that’s the fun part about it. Because in the locker room we know how close we’ve been. It’s also good to see who truly believes it and who’s just kind of saying it because it’s something you should say.”

Speaking of the next step: It’s the hardest one. It’s an achievement to crack the top five, as the Badgers have done many times before, even getting to No. 3 in the Amway Coaches Poll last November. It’s another thing to tackle the hurdle of getting there, sticking there, and then ascending to No. 1.

The 2018 team resembles a group capable of lifting Wisconsin into the Playoff, if not all the way to the top of college football – it’s a team fully versed in Chryst’s system, led by an experienced senior class and paced by an offense with the potential to rank as the best in program history.

“I feel like the pieces are slowly coming together,” said linebacker Ryan Connelly. “We’ve made a name for ourselves the last couple of years.”

An issue earlier in Chryst’s tenure, the offensive line now rates as the nation’s best, with three of the five returning starters projected as contenders for the first round of next year’s NFL draft. Junior quarterback Alex Hornibrook is 20-3 as the starter. Sophomore running back Jonathan Taylor is a heavy Heisman Trophy contender after nearly cracking 2,000 yards as a freshman. There’s a void at tight end, but the receiver corps’ overall ability far exceeds its misleadingly unimpressive numbers.

There are just three returning starters on defense, but that’s likely another misleading statistic: Wisconsin hasn’t finished outside the top seven nationally in total defense since 2012, and there’s no reason to think that streak will end this season despite the task of breaking new contributors on the defensive line, at linebacker and in the secondary.

“I think we have a chance to be good,” said Chryst.

The Earth didn’t spin off its axis at the simple statement of confidence, though Chryst is known for his extreme restraint, last year’s calling-out of Miami’s turnover chain during an Orange Bowl victory notwithstanding. But Wisconsin is just that: confident.

“I really like this team,” Alvarez said. “Teams aren’t crazy about playing us because it’s hard. It’s hard to prepare for a team that’s going to come out and play physical. How do you get physical all of the sudden? How do you prepare your defense for almost 700 pounds combination blocking you all day?”

Like everyone else, Wisconsin has its mantras. One stems from a visit by motivational speaker Kyle Maynard, a quadruple amputee who scaled Mount Kilimanjaro by crawling the 19,340-foot ascent. How’d you do it, Maynard was asked. By taking it three feet at a time, he answered. Three feet equals a yard. The math worked for a football team.

A phrase was born. The answer to the question of how you eat an elephant is simple: by taking it one bite at a time. Wisconsin speaks about traveling the road to a division title, Big Ten title and national title three feet at a time.

Chryst talks about Moonlight Graham, a baseball player who appeared in one professional game, for the New York Giants in 1905, and ended his career with zero at-bats and no defensive chances. The message? You never know when your opportunity will come, so "just be ready,” Chryst said.

There’s the story of the Belgian pull horse, which on its own can tug 8,000 pounds but when used in tandem with another can tow 24,000. If trained, that total rises to 32,000. Wisconsin's offensive linemen appreciate the metaphor. The shirts players wear under their jerseys and during offseason workouts read: Nobody Cares. Work Harder.

“This program is on the brink of breaking through that wall,” right tackle David Edwards said. “We’ve had a lot of success in the past – the New Year’s Six bowls, back-to-back Big Ten titles. It almost feels like we’re so close, we’re so close, we’re so close. When are we going to break through that wall?”

The biggest difference between Wisconsin and Clemson, for example, is that Clemson was a punchline until three years into Dabo Swinney’s tenure, when the program began to match and then exceed Wisconsin's overall consistency. The Tigers played for a national championship four seasons later, in 2015, and took home the title the following year.

But the Badgers’ recent trajectory mirrors Clemson’s in one respect: Going from a New Year’s Six bowl to the Playoff, as the Tigers did under Swinney, is the logical next step. The 2018 team is good enough to do so. And a national championship? Wisconsin can win that, too.

“You do, you have a chance. There’s an opportunity now,” Chryst said. “We’re all trying to climb that mountain.”